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It is a bold claim to make that any law drama could be better than the iconic Suits, but Matlock might just be it. There's one very specific aspect where this claim will stand undisputed, making this CBS legal drama better than Harvey, Mike, or even Donna.
Suits is one of the most-watched live dramas of the legal world and even the most-streamed TV show in 2023. However, any lawyer, or just anybody with access to basic research skills, watching the show will fail to rally with it from the very first episode.
Keep reading to find out what led us to make this bold claim of placing Matlock over Suits LA and even Suits.
Why Matlock is better than Suits LA, and even Suits
Suits LA, greenlit after the massive streaming numbers for Suits, was poised to be the next big thing in the legal drama world. Cameos from David Costabile's Daniel Hardman, Rick Hoffman's Lewis, and even Gabriel Macht's Harvey just go to show how high the expectations were from Suits LA.
However, as we all know by now, it did not stand up to those expectations and was cancelled just after a season. The show never managed to tap into the heart and the charm that made Suits what it was. Instead, the one legal drama that ended up stealing all the spotlight, and an Emmy nomination, was Kathy Bates' Matlock.
So, Matlock very publicly turned out to be better than Suits LA.
Considering Matlock and Suits, the one aspect where the Kathy Bates starrer overshadows Suits is its plausibility in the real world.
The basic premise of Suits depended on Mike being hired by Harvey despite the fact that he was not a real lawyer, had never graduated from law school, and was not registered on the bar at all. This detail was pulled off in the show, but a lawyer or anybody with the basic tools of research would discover that this could never be plausible in real life. For a lawyer to even be able to sit for the bar exam in New York, they have to have attended a law school.
Sure, suspending disbelief is often a big part of television drama, but when the basic premise of a drama is unbelievable, it becomes a little difficult to keep up.
Matlock, on the other hand, is much more grounded in its premise. Matty, played by Bates, gets a job at a law firm pretending to be an old woman who needs to support her husband. However, her only goal is to get documents proving that her daughter's death by overdose could've been prevented if the firm hadn't hidden certain documents.
The lies and the fake self that she presents in front of the people at the firm while trying to find the documents are all solely grounded in the premise of the show, never forcing the viewer to suspend their disbelief too much.
The struggles that come with the opioid crisis, be it the people suffering or their families, are extremely well depicted. Matty's quest for revenge against the company is so well portrayed (a well-deserved Emmy nomination).
Both shows have lies at their core premises, where a person presents themselves as something they're actually not, but Matlock does it so much more cleanly, in a much more grounded manner than Suits.
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